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Capitulation Follow up

Capitulation Follow up

And the destruction of our country

Jun 17, 2026

Phillips O’Brien is an indispensable source for info and analysis on foreign and military affairs. He does a longer and deeper dive into the actual Memorandum of Understanding.

Here’s the link: https://open.substack.com/pub/phillipspobrien/p/midweek-update-15-the-mou-is-out?r=8ldzwe&utm_medium=ios

Bottom line: it’s worse than you think.

Thought exercise. Between the degradation of the U.S. military and weakening of U.S. influence as a result of the Iran War, Trump’s refusal to support Ukraine or ever criticize Putin, Trumps alienation of our democratic allies and neighbors while cozying up to strongmen and dictators, and this Administration’s disastrous handling of the economy (tariffs, DOGE, etc.), what would a President do differently if they wanted to destroy our country?

Serious question.

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John S.4 months ago

It’s amazing to watch the turd polishers justify Trump saying it’s ok for Iran to have ballistic missiles.

My “imagine if Biden” simulator broke.

Tam R4 months ago

It’s just amazing to me all of the foreign policy “experts” and politicians who were respected inside the beltway for their foreign policy chops, like McCain, who spent decades calling for war against Iran. Of course there is never a point at which the major news outlets admit those experts and pols were dead fucking wrong.

TBone Dinosaur4 months ago

Exhibit A (another score for Team Putin):

"Hegseth presents his plan for a staged US withdrawal from NATO, designed to benefit the Kremlin as much as possible. Want a G&T with that?"

(Financial Times article at link) https://bsky.app/profile/robertscotthorton.bsky.social/post/3mokztjdcwc23

C P4 months ago

Frankly, good?

We saw in the whole Greenland mess that Trump was very much willing to do the same bullshit he did in Venezuela and Iran to NATO allies. And even if he never does, the idea's on the table now, which means at some point a future Republican president who's just as crazy and evil and not quite as much of an abject coward is going to do it. The last thing Europe needs is U.S. military bases serving as ready-made fifth columns inside countries that the U.S. might decide to attack.

It sucks that this signals weakness to Putin, but Trump was never going to do anything to defy Putin anyway. So losing his bases in Europe costs us nothing in the face of the one threat, and helps a great deal in the face of the other.

These days, preparing your national defense without the United States is, to coin a phrase, a lot like going to war without an accordion.

TBone Dinosaur4 months ago(edited)

I still don't think it's great, breaking all those defensive alliances at once seens like a recipe for disaster. If anyone can spin up disaster, it's that fucking guy and his bloodthirsty minions. Fascism on the march is rubbing its hands together in anticipatory glee.

r po4 months ago

Oh and yes https://bsky.app/profile/phillipspobrien.bsky.social has been... accurate? No lies? No false optimism? Enthusiasm when warranted, yes. Sober nearly always.

r po4 months ago

Maybe think about it from the POV of: if you wanted to loot the maximum amount of "money" as quickly as possible from the richest late stage capitalist empire on the planet, what would you do? "Capitalist" here doing a lot of work substituting for "Oligarchist". Putin is the model. Even for the end game.

C P4 months ago

That's not a bad way to view it.

Part of that I think is that modern capitalists increasingly have no idea how to make money by actually doing anything productive. All they know how to do is bust-outs. So when they end up in charge of governments, they do what they've always done.

Busted Knee4 months ago

If you look at that great California product, tech, we know what's going on. The main profit making items have hit a wall. Some stuff, physical hardware ala apple and Dell or corporate infrastructure software ala Microsoft, will keep printing money no matter what because people actually need it. But those haven't grown in a while. Miracle growth tech like social media, uber, and all the other "start-up culture" money grabs have hit a wall. They rely on venture capital and then extraction but they tend to die off.

Busted Knee4 months ago

Tech, and thus the entirety of several blue states economies, relies on lack of regulation, government money, dodging taxes, and monopoly control to do what it does. And then you must race on to the next big thing or you are obsolete.

When Biden mentioned regulation tech did the smart thing and staged a revolt. The start-up style venture capitalism tech is dead without a flood of government money and no regulation and they are going to get it. Without it SanFransico, Seattle, and other blue areas will be smoking craters along with the stock market.

Want to really own the libs? Break up tech, tax them, and regulate them. California will be owned like crazy.

mister mixAuthor4 months ago

*what would a President do differently if they wanted to destroy our country? *

Not much. The question is whether it's intentional or whether it's like a pinball careening around. Going with the pinball analogy, Putin, Musk and Netanyahu, among others, are the flippers on the pinball machine, but really it's the chaos of Trump himself that damages the country the most. The Iran war was Netanyahu manipulating him, but also his hubris about his "big win" in Venezuela made this Dunning-Krugerite decide that wars were easy.

Joe is Wypoxic4 months ago

I think that’s a pretty good take

John S.4 months ago

Trump doesn’t do anything intentionally that isn’t driven by his Swiss cheese lizard brain.

He just lurches from one impulse to the next, without any plan or coherence.

Then his minions run around explaining how the random chaos generator is really a genius playing 11 dimensional chess.

C P4 months ago

what would a President do differently if they wanted to destroy our country?

Let me answer with a link: https://3weirdsisters.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/happy-independence-day-reprise-edition/

Musings on the meaning of patriotism and its utter incompatibility with conservative values:

Those who most loudly proclaim their “patriotism” these days are those who are also most likely to bitch and moan about [...] how their “freedom” is being encroached upon when they are asked to pay their fair share of what it costs to live in a civilized society, about how in a truly “free” nation it would be every man for himself – never seeing the contradiction inherent in that belief, that there is no need for a “nation” if we adopt the mantra of every man for himself.

In short, caring for your fellow citizens is what makes you a patriot, and when you adopt the Thatcher mantra of "there is no such thing as society," what you're really saying is there's no such thing as country.

C P4 months ago

(Old-timers may recognize the writers as Jennifer from Sadly, No!)

If you take the conservative view of extreme individualism and no responsibilities whatsoever towards society, then you don't actually believe in patriotism. Because America is that society.

But even without that ideology, this is something you see in one country after another: conservatives don't actually love their country with any sense of obligation towards it. They love it because it keeps them at the top. And the minute that privilege is threatened, they bolt. It's why so many French royals and nobles were perfectly happy selling out to the Prussians and Austrians right after the French Revolution. It's why French elites a century and change later were perfectly happy selling out to the Nazis in an age of rising social democracy. It's why American slave-owners were perfectly happy to revolt against the U.S. and beg for help from the British and French the second slavery seemed threatened.

C P4 months ago

Viewed in that light, "Russia, if you're listening" follows a long pattern of conservative behavior. It's also why even actions that aren't or may not be intentional treason have the same effect. The conservative view of their country (of which Trump is less the extreme and more the logical endpoint) isn't that they belong to it, like a family. It's that it belongs to them, like a toy or a comic-book. And they can do with it whatever they want. If they want to wreck it, well, who are you to tell them they can't break their toys?

TBone Dinosaur4 months ago

That's what I've been saying about Putin's puppet for a long time (what would they be doing differently).

On the daily homoerotic fascination front, I need to know: who is Steve?

https://bsky.app/profile/robertscotthorton.bsky.social/post/3moj3wkuvn22j

TBone Dinosaur4 months ago

Is it Witikoff? Miller? Some reporter?

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